A ‘fleet of foot’ operational capability helped NSS balance the books at the end of last financial year.
Finance manager Darren Locke has read the tea leaves and said the business proved that being able to meet emerging opportunities effectively helped the bottom line.
“The year got off to a really good start, quite busy through the port and we took full advantage of that.
“We picked up a few opportunities that we hadn’t budgeted for and we were able to react quickly as a business, which NSS is exceptional at doing, to react and to meet the customers’ needs at short notice.
“So that’s one of our strengths here at NSS. And we definitely showed that in the first half of the year with the number of opportunities that we were able to capitalise on.”
Bad weather which presented itself in the second part of the year proved to be more challenging, Darren said.
“We had the rains and cyclonic weather, which slowed down a few things in terms of some of our warehouse customers and some of the cargoes coming through the port.
“And then there’s the catch-up across the board. Everyone wants everything at once and, again, NSS reacted well to that. We are always trying to meet the customer’s expectations there, but it throws a lot of challenges onto the business.”
The purchase of equipment to service new contract agreements also put pressure on the profit and loss statement, Darren said.
“We’ve spent a lot of money on our fleet, making sure that that’s up to spec for work we won transporting molasses during the harvest and that’s been pretty successful, but we obviously had to do that work in advance.
“That takes a lot of time and effort. So that’s been over the second half of FY25. There’s a lot of peripheral activity going on in terms of that side of the business.”
The ’25 financial year proved NSS was large enough to make a difference and agile enough to respond quickly to client needs, he said.
“From a financial point of view, that definitely reflects in the results because some months one area is doing really well, the others might be struggling, but overall the business is being successful.
“I like the fact that we are diverse and that enables us to ride out those times when things are a little bit slow in one particular area. It makes my job easier when you’ve got that sort of depth.”